Norwegian Blue parrot really DID exist - but now they are all 'stiff, bereft of life and ex-parrots'

By ANDREW LEVY

Last updated at 00:17 16 May 2008

As we know, it has shuffled off its mortal coil and joined the choir invisible. Its metabolic processes are history. It is demised.

But while the parrot in the celebrated Monty Python sketch is well and truly dead, those hilarious exchanges between John Cleese and Michael Palin have winged their way into comedy immortality.

Cleese complained that the Norwegian Blue sold to him by pet shop owner Palin was lifeless - and kept upright by being nailed to its perch.

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The dead parrot sketch in Monty Python first aired in 1969

Adding to the absurdity was the fact that parrots - being tropical birds - don't come from Scandinavia.

Or do they? For now, in a development putting the sketch in a completely different light, it turns out that the Norwegian Blue did exist.

Dr David Waterhouse, a fossil expert and Python fan, has found that parrots not only lived in Scandinavia 55million years ago, but probably evolved there before spreading into the southern hemisphere.

His discovery was based on a preserved wing bone of a previously unknown species, given the scientific name Mopsitta Tanta - and now nicknamed the Norwegian Blue.

The dead parrot script, voted Britain's favourite alternative comedy sketch by Radio Times readers in 2004, was written by Cleese and Graham Chapman and first broadcast in 1969.

As he returns the ex-parrot to Palin's pet shop, Cleese is assured it is just resting or stunned, being "tired following a prolonged squawk" and "pining for the fjords".

Cleese bangs it on the counter, trying to wake it up, screaming: "Hello, Mister Polly Parrot! I've got a lovely fresh cuttlefish for you!" But it is definitely expired.

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A fossil expert has discovered that parrots not only lived in the region 55million years ago but probably evolved there before spreading to the Southern Hemisphere

Dr Waterhouse, 29, said of Mopsitta Tanta: "Obviously, we were dealing with a bird that is bereft of life, but the tricky bit was establishing it was a parrot."

He was studying for a PhD at the University of Dublin in 2005 when he visited a museum in Jutland and spotted a fossilised 2in-long humerus - appropriately enough, the funny bone - among bird remains which had been found near an open-cast mine.

Research has now confirmed the bone was part of an upper wing from a bird in the parrot family. Although the mine was in Denmark, the birds would also have lived in what is now Norway.

Dr Waterhouse, now assistant curator of natural history at the Norfolk Museums Service, said: "All that remained was a single upper wing bone, but it contained characteristic features that showed it was clearly from a member of the parrot family, about the size of a yellow-crested cockatoo.

"It isn't as unbelievable as you might think that a parrot was found so far north.

"When Mopsitta was alive, most of northern Europe was experiencing a warm period, with a large shallow tropical lagoon covering much of Germany, South-East England and Denmark.

"This was only ten million years after the dinosaurs were wiped out and some strange things were happening with animal life all over the planet.

"After the dinosaurs, lots of niches needed filling. No southern hemisphere fossil parrot has been found older than about 15million years, so this new evidence suggests parrots evolved here in the northern hemisphere before diversifying further south in the tropics later on."

Details of the Norwegian Blue have been published in the latest issue of Paleontology journal, under the distinctly Pythonesque title Two New Fossil Parrots (Psittaciformes) from the Lower Eocene Fur Formation.

However, the Pythons were wrong about one thing...the Blue could hardly have pined for the fjords.

"This parrot shuffled off its mortal coil around 55million years ago, but the fjords in Norway were formed during the last Ice Age and are less than a million years old," said Dr Waterhouse.